Tibbot, the best of pilots and steersmen in Ireland, met me as I clambered up on to the deck.
“Whist!” he entreated, as I was beginning to open my mouth in eager questionings.
“What has happened?” I asked in a whisper.
“The chief has been badly hurt,” he replied. “He lies in the poop cabin, bleeding, I fear, to death.”
“What!” I exclaimed; “bleeding to death?”
“Let me tell you – ”
But I interrupted him sharply.
“I must see him at once,” I said, and I made my way to the poop, where, stretched on a couch of skins, lay my friend and master. As I bent over him he opened his eyes, and though the cabin was but dimly lighted, I thought he smiled. I took his hand and knelt beside him. My anguish was so keen that I could not speak.
“Ruari,” said he, and that great full voice of his had been changed into that of a babe; “is it you Ruari?”
“Yes; it is I,” replied I, finding nothing else to say, for words failed me.
“Ruari, I am dying,” said he simply, as one who knew the state in which he was, and feared not. “I have received the message of death, and soon must my name be blotted out from among the living.”
As he was speaking there was a rustling in the waist of the ship, and Grace O’Malley stood beside us.
“Father, father,” she cried, and taking his head and shoulders on her breast, she crooned over him and kissed him, murmuring words of passionate mourning, more like a mother than a daughter.
“Grace,” said he, and his voice was so small that my breathing, by contrast, seemed loud and obtrusive. “I am far spent, and the end of all things is come for me. Listen, then, to my last words.”
And she bent over him till her ear was at his lips.
“In the blinding fog,” continued he, “we drifted as the ocean currents took us, this way and that, carrying us we knew not whither – drifting to our doom. The galley, before we could make shift to change her course, scraped against the sides of an English ship – we just saw her black hull in the mist, and then we were on her.”
The weak voice became weaker still.
“It was too big a ship for us, yet there was but one thing to do. I have ever said that the boldest thing is the safest thing – indeed, the only thing. So I ordered the boarders forward, and bade the rowers take their weapons and follow on.”
The dimming eyes grew luminous and bright.
“It was a gallant fight,” he said, and his accents took on a little of their old firmness, “but she was too strong for us. In the attempt we lost several of our men, and two were taken prisoners. We were beaten off. Just as the vessels drove apart, and the barque was lost in the mist, a stray shot from an arquebus hit me in the thigh – and I know I cannot survive.”
“What was the name of the ship?” asked Grace.
“The Rosemary, of Bristol,” he replied. It was the name of the merchantman we had seen with the two corpses swinging from the yard of her foremast. “You will avenge my death, Grace, but not now. You must return at once to Connaught, and assemble our people. Tell them that my wish, my command at the point of death, is that you should succeed me in the chieftainship.”
There was no sound for a space save only the cry of the curlews on the shore, calling to their mates that another day was dawning.
“Ruari,” said the ghost of a voice, “Ruari, I had hoped that you and Grace – ”
But the cold fingers of death sealed the lips of the speaker.
Grace O’Malley fell forward on the stiffening body; and, thinking it best, I left the living and the dead together. In another hour the three galleys were beating northward up the coast, and on the evening of the second day after Owen O’Malley’s death we anchored in the haven of Clare Island, where the body was buried with all the honours and ancient ceremonies paid by the Irish to their chiefs.
Then came the meeting of the clan to determine who should succeed Owen O’Malley, for, according to a law similar to that which prevails among our Celts of the Islands, the members of each sept who have reached the age of the warrior, have a voice in the election of chiefs. As I was not in reality one of themselves, nor could forget that I was a Scot – a Redshank, as the English called me, albeit I could ruffle it on occasion with the best Englishman that ever stepped – I took no part in the council, nor spoke my mind until the older men had said their say.
It was at once a beautiful sight and a memorable, this great gathering, and the most beautiful and memorable thing of all was that men were content, and more than content, that a woman should, for the first time in their history, be called their chief.
When it was my turn to speak, I related what I had heard fall from Owen O’Malley as he was dying, and, without further words, dropping on my knee I took the hand of Grace O’Malley, and swore by the Five Wounds of God to be her servant so long as it might be her will.
Then her people, old and young, pressed about her, calling her their darling and their pride, and thus she became their leader and chief.
But with the death of Owen O’Malley there was an end of the times of peace and quietness in Connaught, whereat, like the hothead I was, I rejoiced, not seeing the perilous adventures that lay before us.
CHAPTER III.
THE TITLE-DEED OF THE SWORD
“Ruari!”
It was the soft note of Eva O’Malley, calling to me as I came within the gate of Carrickahooley Castle, whither Grace O’Malley, our mistress, had come to fulfil her period of mourning for her father. I had just crossed over from Clare Island on a small sailing vessel, which now lay in the little harbour under the west wall.
“Ruari!”
It was ever a sound of gladness to me, that sweet voice; and looking up to the chambers of the women, half-way up the front of the great square tower, I beheld the fair face, framed in its pale-gold curls, against the darkness of the embrasure of her window. My heart gave a quick bound of pleasure, and then I grew hot and cold by turns.
For I loved her, and the fear that is born of love made my strength turn to weakness when I gazed upon her. Yet was I resolved to win her, though in what way I knew not. Neither did I hope overmuch up to that time that I understood her, for her manner was a riddle to me.
And here let me set down what were then my relations with these two women, or, rather, what was their attitude to me.
Grace O’Malley clearly regarded me as a younger brother, and never lost a certain air of protection in her dealings with me. To her I remained always in some sort “a little boy, a child,” whose life she had saved – although I was one of the biggest men in Ireland.
Eva O’Malley, who was two years younger than I, had tyrannised over me when I was a lad, and now that I was a man she mocked at and flouted me, dubbing me “Giant Greathead” – I say “Greathead,” but in our language Greathead and Thickhead are the same – and otherwise amusing herself at my expense. But in her griefs and troubles it was to me she came, and not to Grace, as might have seemed more natural.
“Ruari!” she called, and I waved my hand to her in greeting. As I went into the hall she met me.
“I was waiting for you,” she said, “for I wished to speak to you before you saw Grace.”
“Yes?” I asked, and as I noticed the freshness of the roseleaf